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sila: whoa!! that sure looks like fun! well done on participating and great job learning! hopefully you can…Hisham: Sure thing, Luke! Hope to see the birthday wish too if it’s possible.Luke: Hi, I would like to use one of ur photo to design a birthday wish for Sitiawan. I would put a credit …Hisham: Let’s just say “Canto Bight” was originally the name of some Tapani Sector noble’s pet duck.Edward: Or the city was named after the planet. Or they were both named after some forgotten dignitary. Weird…sila: glad that opah felt better though. hope she continues to feel healthy.sila: yay to a successful surgery! i hope you are recovering nicely. i’m imagining weird things with the s…Hisham: Thanks, chief. And yes I think your name is the longest we’ve ever had on here. Haha.

About

Hisham and Sila has been writing stuff down on this weblog since 2005. Sometimes they post photos of family, sometimes they talk about film, books and music, sometimes there is artwork and stuff about tabletop gaming.

In a transhuman or posthuman setting, you are able to enhance your body and your mind with cybernetics or nootropics, or you could discard your body and drive a totally different body which might be organic or synthetic, or you could discard physicality and live as a ghost in a machine, in one of many simulated realities. Human minds are becoming more and more posthuman, being able to share their experiences, store their memories in exocortexes, fork their minds and reintegrate their minds later, and to create simulations upon simulations upon simulations for purposes that would eventually become incomprehesible to the human mind.

Players straddle that point in the post-scarcity setting where anything could be created with a 3D printer, from food to entire space habitats. Just died? Retrieve your cortical stack where your memories are stored, print out a new body and insert the stack into the receptacle in the brain, and you're back. Are you a new individual or are you the same? What if you fork your mind and there are dozens of you walking around in either similar bodies as you or in different-looking bodies? Are they all still you?

These are questions posed when you play RPGs like Eclipse Phase. Of course it's not all just heavy discussion on philosophy. You also get to shoot bad guys with railguns and beam weapons.

Here is the first set of Transhuman Heroes paperminis I created on Patreon. These are all organic human bodies. No mechanical bodies, uplift bodies nor bodies adapted for conditions such as like in the skies of Venus or the seas of Europa.

Paperminis for those other types of bodies will be released soon. As usual, the download is a PDF of two sets of six characters as seen in the photo above.

Aidilfitri vacation was coming to an end. We left for home from Pasir Mas at 0430 hours and arrived at the eastern end of the mountain roads just in time for Subuh prayers. By the time we reached the Titiwangsa rest stop an hour later, this was what we saw while the cold winds buffetted us:

We got one amazing view from the top of the hills as the sun peeked over the horizon. If only we could stay up there and enjoy the view forever.

The photos here could not do justice to the view because of the low light conditions, as well as the sun coming up right before us.

It was like the top of the world, with the layer of clouds were like a carpet of whiteness in the valley far below us and the only explanation I can find...

This year I was able to take a full week's vacation for Eid vacation at Pasir Mas. I was able to take a vacation because I had a job to take a vacation from this year, which is one of the many things I am grateful for this year. We arrived a couple of days early so Ain could work her magic in the kitchen. There was also a lot of orange soda thanks to Abang G.

Eid was on a Friday. Irfan and I walked to the masjid, and almost missed the Eid prayers but got into the back line just in time.

A month ago, Betty went out for her daily roams and never came back. The neighbours reported not seeing her. She was gone all throughout Ramadhan. We live close to thick tropical-grade underbrush. One possibility is that she might have come afoul of local wildlife - and I don't mean squirrels. After three weeks, I had accepted that we would never see her or hear her little mewlings again.

For weeks only Comel, the neighbour's cat, hung around about the house. Here she is trying to persuade me to let her drive us to town. Well, not without a valid driver's licence, missy.

But on Sunday, while Irfan was playing with Comel's owners from next door, his classmate came a-visiting bringing with him Betty!

Thanks to Irfan's sustained crowdsourcing efforts and detailed descriptions, his friend from school recognized Betty's markings and her collar at a housing area half a mile away! At first she was somewhat reserved, but ultimately she went back to her old self, napping in her old shoebox.

Way, way out from the left field comes a blog post about nasyid. I was assigned to sing in the department's nasyid group for an interdepartmental nasyid competition despite not having to sing in public since 1987.

Here is a screen capture of a video of our singing, which is linked below.

We took a team photo after our performance.

Ain took the video, some photos and lent her support. The team ended up at fifth place out of twenty, which meant that my unholy, discord screeches were not strong enough to pull the team down.

On our recent return to the city, the GOKL gang gifted upon us more fun stuff: the Guardians of the Galaxy expansion set for the Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building game. Since then, we never had the opportunity to break it out of the box to play it... until today.

The Hero cards included were Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax the Destroyer, Groot and Rocket Raccoon - thrown into the limelight thanks to last year's film no doubt. Poor Phyla Vell, Adam Warlock, Bug, Mantis and Cosmo the Space Dog. Pip the Troll was absolutely inconsolable.

The Masterminds provided in the set are Thanos the Goonie and the Kree Supreme Intelligence, supported by two Villain sets: Kree and Infinity Gems - the latter able to act as either Villains or Artifacts.

Irfan and I played twice, both times against the Supreme Intelligence. The first game against the Intergalactic Kree Nega-Bomb Scheme was a massacre because all the Master Strike and Scheme Twist cards were shuffled on top of the Villain Deck. We could barely touch the Supreme Intelligence because it collected a truckload of Shards that increased its strength against players attacks before we all lost. (Irfan was glad he captured Korath the Pursuer though.)

Also, Scheme Twists activate the Nega-Bomb that wiped out all the Heroes arrayed in the HQ.

So we thought we'd switch Star-Lord for the Hulk in the second game, because he's a heavy hitter! Irfan wanted to capture Korath again. He even collected enough Hulk cards in the Forge the Infinity Gauntlet Scheme to punch the crap out of the Time Gem.

Hulk will punch the crap out of anything.

For this game, the Henchmen cards were Hand Ninjas. Why would Hand Ninjas be henchmen to the Supreme Intelligence and the Kree villains? BECAUSE COMICS! Irfan took out three Hand Ninjas in a single... um, hand.

I bet the Hand wishes all they had to fight was Daredevil.

Meanwhile several Scheme Twists returned captured Inifinity Gems back into the city, reinforcing their strength with more Shards. Finally, here is Irfan's hand of three Hulk and one Groot cards, the coup de grace that wiped out the last Supreme Intelligence Mastermind card, dealing a whopping 16 damage points!

Final Victory Point tally: I got a measly 9 points while Irfan acquired 32 - for capturing 3 out of 4 Mastermind Tactics cards and the final Mastermind card, as well a host of Kree and Hand bad guys.

Korath the Pursuer escaped Irfan though. Next time, Korath! Next time!